It’s nice to see someone cares after South Dakota taxpayers dumped over $25 million into an industrial park with ZERO tenants and ZERO prospects;
Eight Sioux Falls banks have come together to create a $16 million financing package to help get land ready for new businesses at Foundation Park in northwest Sioux Falls.
“This financing package allows us to react to infrastructure needs required by our prospects,†said Slater Barr, president of the Sioux Falls Development Foundation. “With the unique size and scope of Foundation Park, it’s not feasible to make every site in the 820-acre park completely build-ready. But with the participation of the banking consortium, we can move fast to add streets, water, sewer — even rail connections — to meet the needs of any company that is ready to build on a Foundation Park site.â€
Well, well, well, it’s about time the private sector of the community decided to invest (our private) money into this project.
While I applaud the effort, like the public investment of infrastructure, all of these ducks SHOULD have been in a row before we annexed the land, and better yet, we should have had at least 2-3 purchase agreements also signed before the annexation, not a plan on a torn bar napkin. FLOPdation Park looks more and more like Amateur Hour over at the Development Foundation, and the rest of us are paying for it.
I will never understand the logic behind this park. In 2016 the city spent nearly 9 million dollars to partially get sewage lines that far north. In 2020 they will spend an additional 29 million to finish the sewer project. Or at least those were the numbers cotter threw at us nearly a year ago today to justify raising water and sewer rates for the 8th consecutive year, which by the way, has nearly quadrupled water and sewr rates in the last decade. So now banks are floating 16 million out to finish infrastructure cotter said was being done by the city…to justify raising water bills? What the hell gives?
The real clincher in all this? Right across the street from the sewage treatment plant just south of I229 and I90, sits development park number 8, with a few hundred acres of so called high caliber industrial lots that sit empty, and have for a long, long time.
Something that’s not tennis, concerts, or spas. Looks like we’re getting ready for a mayor that doesn’t play full time.